Do you agree with those circumstances?
According to Goetz’s statement, the first contact he had with the four youths came when Canty, sitting or lying on the bench across from him, asked, “How are you?” to which he replied, “Fine.” Shortly thereafter, Canty, followed by one of the other youths, walked over to the defendant and stood to his left, while the other two youths remained to his right, in the corner of the subway car.
Canty then said, “Give me five dollars.” Goetz stated that he knew from the smile on Canty’s face that they wanted to “play with me.” Although he was certain that none of the youths had a gun, he had a fear, based on prior experiences, of being “maimed.”
Goetz then established “a pattern of fire,” deciding specifically to fire from left to right. His stated intention at that point was to “murder, to hurt them, to make them suffer as much as possible.” When Canty again requested money, Goetz stood up, drew his weapon, and began firing, aiming for the center of the body of each of the four.
Goetz recalled that the first two he shot “tried to run through the crowd but they had nowhere to run.” Goetz then turned to his right to “go after the other two.” One of these two “tried to run through the wall of the train, but … he had nowhere to go.” The other youth (Cabey) ” tried pretending that he wasn’t with [the others],” by standing still, holding on to one of the subway hand straps, and not looking at Goetz. Goetz nonetheless fired his fourth shot at him.
He then ran back to the first two youths to make sure they had been “taken care of.” Seeing that they had both been shot, he spun back to check on the latter two. Goetz noticed that the youth who had been standing still was now sitting on a bench and seemed unhurt. As Goetz told the police, “I said, ‘you seem to be all right, here’s another,”‘ and he then fired the shot which severed Cabey’s spinal cord. Goetz added that “If I was a little more under self-control. .. I would have put the barrel against his forehead and fired.” He also admitted that “If I had had more [bullets], I would have shot them again, and again, and again.”